The present invention relates generally to devices for positioning a work piece at a workstation and, more particularly, to positioning devices for precisely positioning a work piece, for example, a glass or plastic sheet, at a plurality of workstations through the use of a positioning device. A method for operating such a positioning device is also disclosed.
Currently, under the control of a positioning device, a work piece is re-positioned at each of several workstations so that operations can be performed on the work piece. Subsequently, the work piece is moved to additional workstations where a plurality of operations is to be performed. Typically, it is desired to position the work piece within a given positioning tolerance so that the operations performed on the work piece are reasonably accurate.
To accomplish precise positioning of the work piece at the workstation, it is necessary that the positioning device and associated locating equipment utilize several sensors along with much wiring and much processor computational resources and activity. Recently, however, work piece positioning and locating equipment has become very precise in the positioning of a work piece, but still require the use of several sensors, and rather significant wiring and computational resources and activity. Thus, those skilled in the art continued to seek a solution to the problem of how to provide a better precision positioning device.